#404 Chuck’s Place: Crossing the River

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! We open first with Jimmy Cliff reverently stirring our souls with Many Rivers To Cross.

Many rivers to cross
But i can’t seem to find my way over
Wandering i’m lost
As i travel along the white cliffs of dover

Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive
I’ve been ripped, washed up for years
And i merely survive because of my pride

And this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s such a drag to be on your own
My women left me but she wouldn’t say why
Guess i’ll just break right down and cry

Many rivers to cross
But just where to begin
I’m playing for time
There’ve been times i find myself
Thinking of committing some terrible crime

Still this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s such a drag to be on your own
My girl left me but she wouldn’t say why
Guess i’ll just break right down and cry

Many rivers to cross
But i can’t seem to find my way over
Wandering i am lost
As i travel along the white cliffs of dover

Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive
I’ve been ripped, washed up for years
And i merely survive because of my pride

For three years prior to our wedding night, Jeanne and I had had sex hundreds of times, however, as I mentioned in The Book of Us, it was not until that night that the tide of orgasm swept over her ego controls in monumental release. That experience had indeed been prepared for through countless efforts, but for Jeanne it was the ritual of matrimony that enabled this dramatic transformation. Transformation means literally, a new formation. In energetic terms, a new circuit is created. Energy can flow in new ways. In Jungian terms, the deep power of the collective unconscious benevolently overwhelms and reshapes the personality in a numinous experience. In shamanic terms, we discover how to shift the assemblage point and enter a different world. We can gain access to, or remain in, that world at will. In effect, we learn to merge our worlds by dropping a veil: all worlds are one.

In ancient societies, the tracks of ritual were deeply laid for all to traverse at major life transitions. Some transitions were forced and violent. Pubescent rites of passage, in many tribes, required boys to be stolen from their family homes in the night by the village men who then physically mutilated them through circumcision and other forms of painful torture. Undergoing these rites ushered these young boys into adulthood, never to be returned to their family homes. They entered a new world, energetically transformed.

The youth in our modern world remain largely uninitiated. The ancient practices have long since receded deeply into the collective unconscious, where they may be encountered as symbolic dreams beckoning transformation. Physically, our youth undergo and display tattoos and piercings, undoubtedly and unknowingly drawn by these stirrings of the collective unconscious. They seek desperately to discover and experience these ancient energetic pathways by breaking down ego control, with its constraints of rationality, through journeys with alcohol and psychedelics. There are many casualties in those journeys, as hidden behind those elixirs are entities that seek bondage, forever feeding off the energy of the would-be initiate, now frozen in addiction.

How do we help our youth cross this river to adulthood in our deregulated world, currently in a state of collapse? After Reagan, the forces of greed were unleashed to feast upon the “youth market.” Cartoons became the vehicle to manipulate children’s needs by attaching them to products in the market. Families would, ultimately, break down, forced to work more and more, as the forces of greed found cheaper slave labor throughout the world to replace an honest wage in America. Phony wars, like Vietnam and Iraq, have led to deep distrust by the youth of an adult world’s ability to legitimately help them cross the river to adulthood through military service. An adult world, which lacks integrity, has to be rejected.

This is the opportunity that President-elect Barack Obama presents. The youth are galvanized by this man. Something deep within them senses integrity. Barack Obama must now re-regulate society. This means creating structures of integrity to allow life to move forward. Obama speaks of service for the youth. I view this as potential new initiatory channels, based on right action. The youth will submit to initiation in an adult world they can trust.

Rituals do not guarantee transformation. Sometimes only part of the self makes it across the bridge over the river. There are many river crossings, where we are offered the opportunity to retrieve all parts of the self. I have had many dreams in my life where midway across the bridge the river rises, washes out the bridge, and I am forced to turn back. Sometimes we are stuck between worlds and we must undertake the ritual of recapitulation to affect a crossing.

Life itself, the ultimate tidal wave, forces us into adult roles, whether we are really ready or not. And so we perform like chameleons, with the deepest truths concealed: that we are mostly pretending and that our deepest needs go unsatisfied. What to do? The shamans suggest that our greatest challenge is to overcome self pity and self doubt. They suggest that our attachment to those habits upholds a familiar, constricted, comfortably uncomfortable self. This in itself, they contend, is a magical act, molding the body through repetitive physical actions, constructing a world to inhabit. Essentially, we physically encase those beliefs and walk the earth in movements that reinforce that world. The shamans suggest that we stalk a new self, that we play the ultimate game of dress up, acting as if with conviction, thoroughness, and most of all, persistence. This can be translated as creating our own rituals, or practicing, with devotion, ancient rituals that have heart or resonance. Be thorough and disciplined in your practice, without attachment to the outcome and yet, with certainty, that at the right moment you will be transformed.

One of my own moments of transformation, also mentioned in The Book of Us, came at my initiation into the “clan of hunters,” in the sea of Jamaica. I sheepishly and foolishly shot many spears, as many fish amusingly swam away from my youthful uncertainty. But, I continued to return to the sea. One day, the alignment happened. The world stopped. I merged with my fish, which lay still, awaiting my spear, and I was initiated into a new world. And yes, I had to suffer a deep physical wound in this altered state. From then on, I lived the ways of the hunter, rarely missing; shooting with sobriety and deliberation, only what I needed.

The world now is undergoing a period of collapse, reformation, and transformation, as we seek to discover the pathways to the true wellsprings of life. On a collective level, we need adult leadership, founded on integrity and right action, to re-regulate genuine access to those wellsprings of life and allow for needed transformation.

To personally prepare for transformation, we can stalk our needed changes by performing the necessary preparatory actions, impeccably, and with persistence. We perform these actions with a calm certainty that at a definite moment, which we cannot predict, a deep alignment will kick in, and transformation will occur, as we are swept across the river into a new world. We are calm Riverwalkers walking with awareness, awaiting the crossing.